Ornamental Grasses - Garden Perennials

A mass planting of ornamental grass Stipa arundinacea around a feature statue at Anglesey Abbey Cambridgeshire UK.

Grasses have been among the trendiest plants to have in the garden in recent years. Fashion aside, there are plenty of reasons to have them in your garden

Grasses have a subtle beauty, their flowers are wind-pollinated and therefore not bright and showy, but feathery and delicate and usually very much in keeping with the rest of the plant rather than being a brightly colored button of a flower stuck on leaves of a totally different shape.

Grasses animate the garden with movement and often with sound. The slightest breeze will set their slender leaves and drooping flower heads into motion and cause gentle rustling sounds.

The shapes and colors of their leaves give a excellent contrast to other features in the garden, to broad-leaved plants and their showy flowers or to the materials and textures of wood, stone, gravel, ceramics etc. that we may have in the garden.

The plants featured are recommended as they are reliable in most soils in most regions and are widely available.

Growing tips and care

Most grasses prefer a sunny position, colored varieties produce their best colors in full sun, if too shady, they tend to go more to a mid-green color.

Once established, grasses tend to be trouble free. prepare the soil with organic matter before planting and look after them through the first summer. Thereafter they will need little care other than weeding.

Cut down deciduous grasses in February (these are the ones that turn brown over the winter), this will encourage them to put on a spurt of growth come spring. New growth doesn't look so good when growing through old dead leaves.

Evergreen grasses shouldn't be cut back drastically as they can take a while to recover. In spring though old tatty leaves with damaged split ends can be trimmed back or removed to tidy the plant up. Also, remove old flowering spikes as they bend or fall over to make way for new.

Propagation

Grasses are generally straightforward to propagate, many can be propagated from seed and almost all can be propagated by division. If you want to make a display of a large number of grasses, such as in the pictures of Stipa arundinacea or Festuca ovina glauca on this page, then propagating will be essential unless you're very rich!

Seed of some grasses such as Festuca ovina glauca will yield a mix of plants of various shades (of blue in this case), to select the best colored ones, prick seedlings out into seed trays, about 15 in each and then be fairly ruthless about discarding the greener individuals to get the best colored plants.

Division;

Of almost all types is successful. Dig them up when actively growing in spring or early summer and simply pull apart. They will separate at the naturally weakest region to give two plants with decent root systems. These can then be planted straight away.

If you wish to build up stocks from container grown plants, then split the plant when the roots fill the pot, with one plant sepe4ating into 3 or 4 offspring, and re-pot, place them in a sunny position and make sure you water them well! This can be repeated as many times as necessary not forgetting a liquid feed, eventually place them in 2L pots and then plant them in the ground when they fill these. This will give you the quickest way to a good sized display of good sized plants.

Festuca ovina - Blue fescue

Glaucous blue-green leaves, forms clump about 8in high, long flower spikes in late spring and early summer, plant in bright sun for best color, look especially good planted in groups of least 3. Several named varieties available, "Elijah blue", and "Blaufuchs" syn. "Blue fox" amongst the best. Also good in pots and containers where it can be a permanent resident amongst spring or summer flowering bulbs or bedding.

Cortaderia selloana - Pampas grass

It's had a bit of a bad press has poor old pampas grass with its connotations of 1970's housing. Like some other plants though, it's earned its reputation unfairly, largely as a result of being planted inappropriately. It is a big plant 6ft tall by about the same wide with flower panicles to 10ft, so plant it slap bang in the middle of a small lawn and it will look completely overwhelming. Maybe people thought "oh its only a grass, it can't be that big".

Best planted at the margins of a garden or at the back of a mixed border unless you have great expanses of lawn. If you can, plant it so that the sun sets behind it when viewed from your house or usual garden viewing place and you could well come to love it. It's very resilient and an easy plant to grow, try it in a difficult area where its natural vigour may well allow it to thrive while the difficult conditions will keep it smaller than normal size (but with less flower panicles).

Be careful where you place pampas grass, particularly if you have children, and also when trimming it. The leaves look soft and harmless, but they have very sharp and nasty backwards pointing saw teeth along their edges. Always wear gloves when cutting it back.

Miscanthus sinensis

Large noble grasses and impressive with it. Available as many different named hybrids, many good ones, particularly "Silberfeder" syn. silver feather and "Cosmopolitan", "zebrinus" is a horizontally striped version with yellow bands on mid green leaves. Grow alone or as a part of a border. Flower panicles good for floral art (or hitting friends / siblings - depending on age). 4ft to 9ft when in flower.